Duckman

From looking at pictures of and reading anecdotes of the late war urban battles there seems to have been plenty of armour used, although that may be partly due to the fact that there was more armour around than earlier in the war. Late-war American divisions usually had at least a tank battalion attached (plus its own tank destroyers etc), and the Soviets built over 7000 SU-76s in 1944 alone which were all sent to the infantry as fire support. The need for armour (and self-propelled artillery) to deal with urban strongpoints is obvious, and it seems it was well understood back then as well. I think it's rather the opposite; the Allies had (a lot) more armour available so armour support would be more likely for Allied units. The Germans had armoured divisions from the beginning of the war where all arms (tanks, infantry, and artillery) practiced together. The British on the other hand were notoriously bad at this and had most of their tanks in separate units with no organic infantry or artillery. The Americans set up proper all-arms armoured divisions but there was of course a learning curve, and infantry divisions would also regularly work with tanks since there were a lot of independent tank battalions around to support them (see above). I remember reading that things improved later in the war when unit attachments were made permanent so the infantry and tanks could train together and form proper relationships.

Axis minors would be a treat, though I don't think they had too much to do with Bagration. BF has already done the Italians of course, but they were gone by early 1943. If there is an end of the war module we should have a decent chance to see the Romanians and Hungarians, including against each other. They have some late war indigenous armour that would be fun as well.

Good discussion. I wasn't familiar with with Dunn's work but will check out his books. I am not advocating the "Red screaming hordes" argument, which is an obvious self-serving sham, however there are some finer points that bear discussing even given the better-than-supposed Soviet training times. If I remember Forczyk correctly (don't have the book with me) he compares the tanker training syllabuses by midwar and finds that the German one was more advanced. Soviet troops in training were also used for other purposes, like helping with the harvest, which detracted from training time. At a unit level there's also the question of top-down leadership (which later carried on in the Nato-vs-WP debate) and the issue of experienced junior leadership. You can train soldiers and crews fairly quickly but officers and NCOs take longer. The huge losses suffered in 1941-42 must have been heavily felt there, especially since the units lost during Barbarossa would have contained a large proportion of the peacetime (non-reserve) officer corps.

Conversely there seems to have been a process of adjusting to the Western front as well. There was a lot of discussion (and blame-gaming) during Normandy and the subsequent battle of France when Rommel and others accustomed to fighting the Western Allies accused the "East Front generals" of being too optimistic with their ideas of counterattacks in the face of British and American air superiority and firepower. They, in turn, accused Rommel and the "Westerners" of being pessimistic and static in their thinking. I don't know if there was a similar process of adjustment at the unit level, but it's quite probable. Precautions against air attack, and generally not bunching up and being careless in the face of air and artillery, seem like obvious areas. It's noticeable that the Germans were able to maneuver with big units in the open during daytime in the East late in the war (check out e.g. picures from the counterattack in Poland) when this was a very risky proposition in the West.

I'm hoping we get minerollers to go with the flamethrowers so we can play Onslaught to Orsha!

What kept the Soviets from improving significantly at the tactical level until at least midwar was the losses, which kept them in a negative feedback loop where high losses lead to shortened training and inexperienced troops sent into combat, where they suffer high losses, etc. The German entered the same downward spiral in the second half of 1944 (a bit earlier for the Luftwaffe and Ubootwaffe). The Soviet air force were able to stop this spiral by 1944 (partly due to the Luftwaffe being withdrawn to protect Germany) when they managed to get losses to an acceptable level, which started a positive feedback loop where recruits could complete their training and then be sent to an operational training unit to get tutored. This had been the Luiftwaffe's model until about the same time, when they were forced to abandon it and entered their death spiral. The situation in the air is a bit easier to track because both pilot training hours and losses are very well documented. On land it gets a bit more muddled, but based on Robert Forczyk's books I'd say it's pretty clear that Soviet tank training was quite rudimentary even by midwar which led to simplified tactics. German tank training was meanwhile still very good and didn't really turn sharply downward spiral until the need to replace losses after Normandy and Bagration broke the back of the training establishment. Of course there were still individual Soviet units and commanders that were very good, but in a general comparison the Germans probably come out ahead until at least midwar when it comes to armour and combined arms (and would also be ahead of e.g. the British, albeit for different reasons).

Hetzerrrrrrr........

And I always thought the Crimea setting was really far fetched and a minus for the game. Reality obviously caught up.

Interesting tidbit on tank cooperation with submachine gunners, from an interview with a Soviet Sherman commander: Source: http://english.iremember.ru/tankers/17-dmitriy-loza.html?q=%2Ftankers%2F17-dmitriy-loza.html&start=4 Anyone know how SMG infantry fit into non-tank unit TOEs?

I remember this type of discussion about lots of games over the years. The question is really: should they do it? Often the argument seems to be that just because soldiers in wargames can realistically do something, they should be able to do it. In this case while soldiers can pick up discarded weapons, how many would realistically do it in combat? It seems more like the kind of thing that happens in war movies or you read about in medal citations (e.g. Audie Murphy jumping into a knocked out tank destroyer and manning the MG). Would the average soldier do it? I dunno. People tend to become locked into their own little tasks, and I wouldn't expect soldiers under pressure to do something "extra" most of the time.

Mickey Mouses on parade! Great pic. The reason I wondered is that it seems the panzer divisions were pretty much rebuilt every spring, which should mean cleaning out nonstandard equipment. But apparently the T-34s were still around in a couple of places. They actually redid some of them in 9 mm, not sure how many though.

I know they had quite a few T-34s at Kursk, but were they still around a year later?

And, to continue the unwarranted statistical excercise, the Soviets built almost 5000 IS-2s and ISU-122/152s in 1944 which means they built almost as many of those as the Germans built tanks! In other words that's a lot of direct fire HE available to Soviet commanders. And to continue the somewhat lighthearted example above, liberal dosages of that can solve tactical problems.

Isn't this where the obscene amount of Soviet AFVs comes in as well? They built over 7000 Su-76s and 14 000 T-34s in 1944 alone (the US built 13 000 Shermans the same year). The result is that unlike the Landser who increasingly found himself facing the enemy alone, the Soviet (and American) soldier could usually count on mobile fire support. (For comparison the Germans built 5000 StuGs and just under 7000 Panzer IVs and Panthers in 1944, for two fronts of course.)

As already suggested there are a few solutions: 1. Make vehicles an exception. Solves the truck problem but makes conscript tanks and halftracks less conscripty. 2. Make trucks an exception, either by always making them Green at a minimum or as a manual workaround. There are a few solutions to that as well: 1. Make it optional. 2. Reply that "every great feature was met with resistance initially". :-)

There are weaknesses in every concept. :-)

It was the 82nd, and I think they became a regular thing only after Normandy. According to Gavin's memoirs they were became part of the TOE and they conducted regular training with them. Other units used them as well but in a less organized fashion. They seem to have been somewhat popular with the Soviets as well, mainly for bunker busting. I'm sort of against soldiers just picking them up since they were quite hazardous and there wasn't really a similar US (or other Allied) weapon which they would already know how to use.

That's a great idea. Simple to understand and presumably simple to implement as well. One of the big problems in wargames is modelling the effects of training, experience, and doctrine. It usually gets conflated into a single number or modifier, which is understandable but doesn't really capture how better troops are more efficient and can do more stuff in a shorter time. Clumsier order giving could go some way towards simulating how more proficent troops could often run tactictal rings around bumbling rookies. The Close Combat games actually solved this in a good way by giving the Germans separate MG and rifle squads, which made them a lot more tactically nimble. CM is fairly liberal when it comes to slitting squads, but some restrictions could be in order in the future to simulate e.g. early war Soviets.

With something like this you could of course force the player to act much more historically correct. It would be especially beneficial for simulating how e.g. the British fought much more "according to plan" which led them to sometimes miss tactical opportunities, and for modelling Soviet and Soviet-inspired (Arab, Chinese etc) forces both in WWII and later. Tight timetables and general bad planning could also be recreated by locking the player down tight. I can only agree here. It sounds like a plan for financial suicide.

Now there's a freaky vehicle. If we get bigger maps this ungainly animal could be a beneficiary.

Haven't played much recently because of Real Life , but this will definitely lure me out the woodwork. Good stuff!

Good stuff. Little tweaks like this can mean a lot.

Is there any way, using the in-game camera, to see exactly how the casualties happen? I'm thinking if we can settle the issue of whether they get hit because they don't keep their heads down (hide) or if it's something else.

The runaway success of the Ipad and App Store means there are a number of both hex ad card wargames in the conversion stage. Several of GMT's titles, for example.

I love that term, it reminds me of the old D&D saving throw.